Following college at Texas Tech and assuming I was going to be drafted, I signed up for the Navy's OCS in October, 1962. I packed my tennis racquet and headed for Newport, R.I. If I hadn't thought school was hell, I knew it for sure at OCS and the subsequent schools that followed. That tennis racquet didn't see a tennis court for over a year. Watching the ships coming into Newport with ice all over their superstructures I decided that sunny Florida and flight training might be a warm idea. More school! While several of my buddies had to take remedial math for navigation I was in remedial swimming. After Pensacola, Florida it was off to Georgia for electronic countermeasure and air intercept training. While there we had a training flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I took my tennis racquet but it was much too hot.

During the Georgia training period and on a hop to Dallas I proposed to Elaine. We were married in Hawaii in August, 1964. We lived in a rent house about a block from the ocean at Eva Beach near Barbers Pt Naval Air Station where my squadron was homeported. My Airborne Early Warning Squadron (AEWBARONPAC) deployed to Midway Island every month for a couple of weeks. After the sattelites came into existence the DEW line and its over water extensions became obsolete. I still had time to serve and received orders back to OCS in Newport as an instructor. That, of course, meant another school- Instructor Training School- in San Diego. For me it was probably one of the best schools I ever attended, it taught me how to be a student. We really liked Newport and the small church there and would have stayed if I could have found some way to make a living in the civilian world. As it was, I needed to return to school to be able to make a living anywhere. I was undecided between making a history prof or a lawyer. Finally decided that the lawyer route would give me more options. Our son, Derek, was born just before we left in 1968.
Following law school at Texas Tech (1968-71) we went to a blue ribbon firm in Corpus Christi. I was one of the few lawyers there who didn't have an undergraduate degree from an Ivy League School. We really didn't feel that we belonged with the blue blood and I volunteered for recall to active duty in the Navy as a JAG officer. Again, that meant another school. Naval Justice School in Newport was followed by a stint at the Naval Air Station in Millington, Tennessee, near Memphis, where our daughter was born. In 1974 we returned to Lubbock for a three year stint in private law practice. While in Lubbock we went to see the show "Texas" in Canyon and fell in love with this little town outside of Amarillo. An opportunity came up to go to work for the IRS as an attorney in the Estate & Gift Tax Division in Amarillo and we have been living in Canyon since 1977.

We have the two children; our son also lives in Canyon and our daughter lives about an hour away in Borger. Both of them are physical therapists and between those two families we have seven grandchildren- 3 girls and 4 boys.

We spent a lot of time playing tennis, white water rafting in Utah and New Mexico, canoeing the Rio Grande during school breaks, and jet skiing at Lake Meredith and Possum Kingdom. Since Lake Meredith and the Rio Grande are both about dry, we are now trying to put our last legs into tennis and cycling, i.e. when we don't have the grandkids. Elaine also spends a little time on the piano and I on the guitar, and we, of course, realize that we waited about 60 years too long to take up these hobbies.

I am hoping to see some of the guys that I haven't ever caught at any of the homecomings, like Lee Edd Wommack, Robert Taylor,Chuck Woodbury, Jimmy Elder, C.B. Curry, George McCasland, Eddie Price, Billy Mayes, Johnny Bostwick.